Retro top 10
THIS WEEK IN 1979
1 Bright Eyes Art Garfunkel 2 Cool For Cats Squeeze 3 Some Girls Racey 4 In The Navy The Village People 5 I Will Survive Gloria Gaynor 6 He’s The Greatest Dancer Sister Sledge 7 Silly Thing/Who Killed Bambi Sex Pistols and Ten Pole
Tudor
8 Sultans of Swing Dire Straits 9 Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground) The Jacksons 10 The Runner The Three Degrees
Apart from writing ‘Bright Eyes’,
Mike Batt is famous for creating
The Wombles, discovering Katie
Melua and conducting many of the world’s greatest orchestras.
He composed ‘Bright Eyes’ for animated movie Watership
Down, based on the 1972 novel by Richard Adams. The movie’s original director had asked Batt the write a song about death to accompany a scene where rabbit Hazel, the film’s lead character, almost dies after being wounded by a farmer’s gun. A cover of the song was later used as the theme to the TV series of the same name.
‘Watership Down’ was a major box office hit in the UK and ‘Bright Eyes’ followed suit in the pop charts, occupying the top spot for six weeks. It sold more than a million copies and was the UK’s biggest selling single of 1979.
Its success was bittersweet for Art Garfunkel whose 1979 album ‘Fate For Breakfast’ - his fourth solo effort away from Simon and Garfunkel - was his first flop in the US, missing the Billboard Top 40. It yielded no top 40 singles in the US but was a big international success, reaching number 2 in the UK and topping the charts in the Netherlands and New Zealand.
Three months after the release of ‘Fate For Breakfast’, Garfunkel’s girlfriend since 1974, Laurie Bird, committed suicide at their Manhattan apartment. He later stated that the incident left him in a deep depression for most of the 1980s, explaining the lack of musical output during that time. – JIM HAYES